Optimized License Procurement

Abstract

Techniques, a system and an article of manufacture for automatically determining a license procurement decision. A method includes identifying one or more license types for a software product, identifying, for each license type, one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information to collect for a product license procurement decision, collecting said identified one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information, populating a license decision matrix with said collected one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information, and automatically generating a license procurement decision for the product based on analysis of the license decision matrix.

1 . A method for automatically generating a license procurement decision, the method comprising:
 identifying one or more license types for a software product;   identifying, for each license type, one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information to collect for a product license procurement decision, wherein said software usage information comprises a remaining capacity of each license type;   collecting said identified one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information;   populating a license decision matrix with said collected one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information;   automatically analyzing said license decision matrix, wherein said analyzing comprises automatically analyzing said collected one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information for each license type in conjunction with cost information corresponding to each license type; and   automatically generating a license procurement decision for the software product based on said analysis of the license decision matrix;   wherein at least said automatically generating the license procurement decision is carried out by a computer device.   
     
     
         2 . (canceled) 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said one or more license types for a software product comprises at least one possible license type for the product. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein said at least one possible license type comprises at least one of a new license type and a renewal license type. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein said information comprises a unit price for each license type. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein said information comprises a required quantity of each instance in each license type. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said information comprises a license requirement of each product installation instance and/or each set of product installation instances. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 7 , wherein said information further comprises asset and/or usage information pertaining to the license requirement. 
     
     
         9 . (canceled) 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said information comprises identification of one or more members of each product installation instance. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said information comprises identification of at least one containment relationship. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said analyzing comprises categorizing the software product into one of multiple pre-established license procurement decision categories. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said analyzing comprises determining a most cost-effective licensing procurement decision. 
     
     
         14 . (canceled) 
     
     
         15 . (canceled) 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said collecting comprises collecting said identified one or more types of hardware configuration and software usage information from an information technology environment under consideration. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 16 , wherein said collecting comprises collecting a number of servers, and a number of processors on each server from the information technology environment under consideration.